In modern theoretical models, even the distinction between natural law and what it governs has already virtually disappeared and looks to be doing so completely in the limit as time marches indefinitely on and our models become increasingly general-case and correspondingly comprehensive in the scope of their explanatory power. Explanatory power always flows from the global, abstract, and general to the local, concrete and specific and never the reverse, as demonstrated in a simple algebraic equation, not to mention complex theoretical models. The most revered sages in the history of many cultures at vastly different times have declared that the nature of reality is not accessible via the senses. This is just a corollary to the intrinsically local and special-case nature of sensory perception and conceptual constructs based on it. It is only the contextual matrix of consciousness that gives meaning to data, allowing its unification in our theoretical models as these evolve in the minds of our greatest geniuses across centuries. The more comprehensively applicable in a practical sense our models become, the more they show us very directly that the true nature of reality is indeed counterintuitive in terms of our local, special-case sensory perception and conception.
It is self-evident that evolution is comprehensively recursive, since energy flow within the cosmos is dictated by its structure and all structural change is a result of energy flow within it. From this perspective, abstract law interacting recursively with itself becomes a compelling definition of consciousness as self-referent intelligence. Our consciousness is the most abstract, general-case aspect of our experience. It is not accessible to the senses, but remains essential to all of them. These are traits in common with axioms as in principle unprovable but essential as forming the roots of any rational system. At the cosmically comprehensive level, our self-awareness could conceivably represent the Cosmic Counterpart of our own consciousness as locally reflected in the evolutionary products of this Supreme and Conscious Intelligence Whom some of us deem to call God. We could view this as a scientific formulation of the scriptural declaration that we are created in the image of God.
I see the whole Creationist, Intelligent Design, "Scientific" Atheism points of view as arising from the Cartesian spirit/matter dualism, or its supposedly now secular and therefore "acceptable" corollaries, the subjective/objective and lawfulness/intelligence dualisms. This obligates us to "explain" consciousness in terms of matter or matter in terms of consciousness from any of these perspectives. For me, Occam's Razor demands we assume no dualism. Scientific empiricism rightly places experience as primary and reason as a tool evolved for conceptually unifying empirical data gathered via our experience. Reason, to be at all useful, must depart from experience as its foundation, that is, for its fundamental roots in experientially derived premises and axioms, and successfully return to experience with their rational implications and resulting practical implementations.
Ultimate questions are therefore axiomatic and unprovable by definition, which absolutely does NOT imply that they are inaccessible to experience, especially when we consider that axioms are generally derived from experimental evidence, which is in turn a specific category within conscious experience. If we admit that we cannot in principle ever know anything that lies outside conscious experience, even if that experience is reading what others have discovered, then we only have conscious experience. This experience includes our ability or inability to relate its internal elements coherently and apply them successfully in practical life.
Objectivity is just a label differentiating reliable, apparently independent elements of experience from more ephemeral, less reliable, or more inconsistent elements of conscious experience. However, this implies no absolute dualism. Occam's Razor requires theoretical economy and therefore the elimination of any dualism not essential to explanatory power. Instead, it permits us to see life as a cosmically unified whole with consciousness at its axiomatic foundation, the limit-case and absolutely general-case abstraction of cosmic lawfulness referring recursively to itself to generate all locally apparent, special-case phenomena available to the senses. We become local points within a holographic cosmos. We locally reflect this Source, this unified, cosmic, ultimately general-case lawfulness/intelligence in our own awareness.
Death to our materialistic view, that is, the special-case illusion of a strictly local identity in space-time supported by an exclusive identification with our bodies, implies our resurrection to newness of life in a unified appreciation of reality as our purified awareness spontaneously comprehends itself as a local reflection of its Source, its Cosmically Comprehensive Antecedent. To think of God literally as some physical or astral being whom we will someday meet at some so far undisclosed location called Heaven is a very provincial reinterpretation of the profound truth embedded in such metaphor. This is the religious equivalent of the secular, "scientific" fundamentalism of those who are atheists or agnostic because they never caught "god" hiding behind a tree. Such "believers"and "unbelievers" are just two peas at opposite ends of the same fundamentalist pod.
To my mind, this fundamentalism, this obsession with and elevation of the material details on the surface of life to "fundamental" status, is the great enemy of true spiritual understanding. It is explicit materialism on the part of atheistic scientists and implicit materialism on the part of their religious counterparts, who can only falsely conceive of spirituality in terms of literal, physical people, things, events, and moral laws and their corresponding belief systems. Is it not possible the mere belief systems have very little to do with genuine spirituality?
Moral laws are too often unsupported by genuine spiritual growth, naturally resulting in a lack of real integrity in the motivations of their would-be adherents. They ignore true fundamentals like the Golden Rule, if not in their neighborhoods, at least internationally, while they kill each other over petty, superficial points of theology or completely different religions. Is it really OK to kill innocent Iraqis or Pakistanis and call it collateral damage, while drones aimed at the same enemies in our own neighborhoods would be unthinkable? Finding our dead brother in the ruins of a neighbor's house because he went to borrow sugar just as a drone took out a U.S.-based terrorist cell is not acceptable here, but it's OK way over there? What happened to the Golden Rule common to all the major world religions? We can and must do better.
